Strategic Marketing & Communications for Nonprofits and Grantmakers

My Story

While in college I read Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and Paton’s Too Late the Phalarope, and Greene’s The End of the Affair. Each had their own profound impact on my view of the world and my role it, and each told a story with a depth of character and nuance that convinced me I wanted to tell stories too.

I finished college with a Journalism degree but the storytelling bug took me somewhat unexpectedly to the the field of philanthropy. For a while I wrote for a journal that covered foundations and nonprofits in the Chicago region, and I went on to establish a public relations office for the association that published it.

I spent a few years working for a big bank in marketing and advertising during a ridiculously large merger, a survival story in itself. I then immersed myself in the digital world when I established and directed online communications for one of the nation’s largest grantmaking foundations.

From there it’s been mostly consulting work, with a year spent running communications for a national early childhood education lobby group. I spend a chunk of my time now in business development for a fantastic digital agency, See3 Communications, and continue to work with foundations and nonprofits to help them be more aggressive and strategic with their communications and audience engagement. This includes a whole bunch of writing and content production designed to move readers to action.

I love words and stories but I love other stuff too. An abbreviated list includes a 15-year-old son who reminds his pop every day that the future of the planet might not be so bleak; a European football club, Liverpool FC, that is a constant source of both joy and frustration, mostly joy of late; cycling, before and after the arctic freeze sets in on my home city of Chicago each year; and, obscure instrumental progressive rock music, for reasons that are difficult to explain.